The contentions that local food's opponents are putting forth are actually founded largely on credible data, and this is in part why the "controversy" surrounding local food persists. However, examining why locavorism does or does not make sense in 21st Century America via only one or two specific data points is leading people to the wrong conclusions.

Our pigs arrived two days ago, and never did anything cuter grace a cloven hoof. They're about 25 pounds each now, and we're going to get them to about 240. Then we are going to kill them and eat them.

Yes, you're going to see a lot of pork. But fear not, vegetarians and non-porkers. There's plenty here for you, too. But if there was ever a reason to hop off the vegetarian train for the night ("Hi, my name is Erin and I'm a vegetarian... 98 percent of the time."), it's at The Pig.

The meat industry, like much else in U.S. agriculture, has consolidated rapidly over the last half-century. Four giant companies produced 83.5 percent of U.S. beef as of 2007. It is in this context that the mobile slaughterhouse makes local slaughter available and affordable to small farmers.

We assume our food system has somehow taken care of itself. The aisles of perfectly aligned boxes, and perfectly stacked produce reflect a system where a tomato is a tomato is a tomato, or an egg is an egg is an egg. Food is a commodity and it's all the same. But it's not.

The organic food movement is a great cause and it has become big business. Now the question is whether we will allow this well-intentioned movement, started by farmers who strived to be stewards of the land, to completely degenerate into a meaningless food trend.

Tmy fellow eco-omnivores preparing the Thanksgiving menu, don't be shy, celebrate the abundant variety that grows from our good earth, with a delicous heritage turkey and a rainbow of seasonal vegetables and fruits.

The revival of local food and local markets is an interesting phenomenon. While it still marches under the banner of the left, it blurs the political distinctions enough that the right ought to feel comfortable joining in.

Stephen Budiansky has stuffed together another flimsy, flammable straw man out of boilerplate anti-locavore rhetoric on the New York Times op-ed page, with the patronizing title Math "Lessons For Locavores."